Myanmar’s Underbelly: The Price of Survival for One Woman 

A single mother in Myanmar grapples with sacrifice, secrecy, and the longing for normalcy. Read Hein Min’s story, a poignant tale exclusive to Different Truths.

Through imperceptible nail-fitting cleavages between some wood boards that make the walls of the house the way a rectangle goes and the gaps beneath the tent-shaped roof, Nature, with its invincible might, shoves its bulk in a modest aureate hue into the pair of dreary convex lenses; there it remains stuck with a feel of weight within the hazel irises, overshadowed by surging clouds of distress. At the sudden release of a prolonged breath, a hot secret falls. The head tilts upward by way of an acute angle, with eyes tossed sideways; remnants of rain that poured last night are still dropping in an irksome staccato from the decayed patch, which has inconspicuous holes, and in consequence, a small puddle has formed in a discoloured metal bowl covered in a spread of cotton cloth in the interior, as to reduce the intensity of the sound when dripping droplets hit the metal surface with high velocity. Now, the view has shifted to it. Over it, the visual lens remains fixed, and then a stinging liquid quickly wells up to resemble the rain puddle she has turned her attention away from. Still, these are relatively tiny puddles for a pair of eyes. All of a sudden, a sleep-drunk grunt breaks forth from the left side, followed by a slight writhing of the body that belongs to a seemingly seven-year-old girl. She lies half-awake. Her mother takes a look down at her in fondness; the little girl remains oblivious to it.

The wall clock shows 6:30 a.m. She then rises to her feet and reluctantly moves toward the window as a person who is fed up with the start of the day. She flings it outward cheerlessly, and at once, a warm shaft of light flows in aplenty without bothering to learn first whether the occupant likes its intrusion. She observes the morning scene before her with eyes suggestive of gloominess, like the winter eventide. There she remains in that dull motionlessness for some time, before she turns back to unintentionally meet the framed photos on the opposite wall a few steps afar. Anger flares in her glare. One of those shows a young couple with a bush plant in the background. It looks kind of old with the faded paint. The other has a new little human added to the twosome. The latter one appears to have been shot in a studio. The man in both pictures has migrated to Thailand on the promise of his family’s livelihood. Monthly, he provided money for their daily expenses through a bank for about a year. But nothing has been heard of him in the past two years since he left there. She then looks away instantly, facing the jackfruit tree that stands motionless, stubbornly, with rivulets of anguish trickling down her cheeks.

It took her a few minutes to finish weeping. She then struts to the back of the house, making herself seem like a confident woman once again, to carry out domestic drudgery, which primarily involves a routine of daily meal preparation, from the additional duty of some washing and sweeping where needed. One hour and a half later, weighed down by the effect that has resulted from the long hours of sleep, the young girl sluggishly appears at the door, which adjoins a small wooden flight of stairs to obliquely pave the way to the traditional culinary room below. She eyes her mother drowsily, scrubbing her right eye with the right hand, her facial expression announcing that she is tired of school and seems to know that she can do nothing about it but just accept the miserable idea. The mother instructs her to begin her routines before it comes time to leave for school, which she follows promptly without a gesture of resentment.

The morning colour grows more noticeable, as does its warmth. The mother leaves her child, entrusting their sole property to her, while she goes to get mohinga for her daughter’s breakfast. She just keeps the door on the latch; she knows nothing disastrous will come of it. A little girl bathes on the smooth, flat, circular rock slab beside a cylindrical tank, three feet in length, filled to the brim with water. A tap pipe, sophisticatedly attached to a nearby motor, always supplies the water. As it describes, it is not of the typical kind that is familiar to most; it has been housed out in the open-air area with a line of chestnut blocks and a cluster of spread-out gravels around the broad rock slate on which they take their positions when it comes to bathing. The violent crashes of water against the hard surface mingled with the soft sounds of nature early in the day.

When the mother returns with rice noodles (mohinga) and warm fish soup wrapped in separate transparent plastic bags, the girl has just finished bathing. She then dresses her daughter up in her school uniform, which is a white cotton blouse in the upper wear and a seaweed-green htamein (the traditional lower outfit of women). The girl, after that, starts to pay homage to Lord Buddha, mumbling prayers almost inaudibly. The Buddha sits in the form of a small gold-glazed idol on a narrow rectangular shrine high above the floor, protruding out of the wall to which they bear their top heads when they lie down to rest or sleep. Just as she has finished, the mother emerges, holding her usual breakfast snack in milky white porcelain bowls, and placing them on a small round wooden table. There are already a few other things laid: a little leftover rice that appears to have gone cold through the night in the cheap metal pot, ceramic-glazed, to go with a meagre quantity of grilled dried fish of inferior value that is soaked in a slight amount of oil inside an open plastic box; this boring stuff is for the one who is the mother. She takes delight in seeing her daughter as she wolfs down the meal before both get into a flurry, preparing to leave for school. On reaching the threshold, she hands her daughter a three-layered round steel lunch box, warm with fresh curry and rice. The young girl hardly minds carrying it herself. The mother clicks the lock into place, ensuring the safety of their home, and they descend the stairs steadily; their footfalls thudding on the wooden slates echo through their silent home.

As they got closer to the school, a crowd with a variety of colours interspersed with the uniformity of white and green colours bright in the gentle sunlight loomed up, accompanied by delicate shrieks and shouts and a rumble of scampering feet from inside the compound. Before they happen to merge into the sea of faces, the mother flicks her hand off her daughter’s as though she is reminded to and sets her on a lone walk toward the awaiting gate. It goes like this every school day. The mother is left alone too, watching her little offspring disappear out of sight from a distance.

When she gets back home, she remembers to remove the wilting flowers at the shrine, place new ones, and renovate its entire ambience with a row of lighted candles and the fragrance spiralling from the tips of burning incense sticks. Before that, she needs to cleanse her whole body first. She says to herself in her mind and gets herself ready with the necessary items before she hurries down to the kitchen toward the water tank. At the turn of the tap, it charges out more water. The overall chore, which she never seems to be bored with, takes about 20 minutes to come to an end. After that, she, as usual, grabs a ragged htamein, which she had earlier hung on the rusty, translucent plastic clothesline near, to change into it. As the cloth soggily sticks to the interior parts of her, the contours of the boobs wildly cock up in parallel sensuousness with the flawless fair arms that are, however, less plump than the aforementioned feature; notwithstanding, both pairs still go in matched beauty. She, then, goes inside, having herself covered from the chest down to the little way below the knees, and as she strides over to the closet, minute streamlets of water remain dripping off the fringe of her moist htamein.

Gently, she rubs the pink towel over her face, down her arms and along her hands with thorough care. She tucks it on the peg afterwards. She, next, throws open one side of the closet in search of some decent casual wear before performing her daily religious ritual at the altar. It is in such a position with one of her legs poised over the hiatus within a light cotton htamein formed into a ring, which she has put all her grips on, that she hears her cell phone ring tone blare off.

A middle-aged customer, of Myanmar origin, from abroad, who is bored of his wife, came to “Paradise in Bed,” where she works part-time, in an irresistible impulse to fulfil among the many pictures shown to him, hers captured his attention and satisfied a recurring desire. him. His flight is due at midnight. But he is currently in an uncontrollable condition to have fun with her before returning to Singapore. With a compromise made of 300 USD for one hour, he talked the administrative head into bringing her before him at once, by any possible means.

That is all she has learned from the phone. She is called; she is wanted; no, she is needed immediately; as if she is of some importance, she feels. In less than 30 minutes, her workmate is going to arrive in a taxi to pick her up at the bus stop near the lower-class district where she lives. As the special guest is waiting, she knows she cannot afford any more time to perform her daily religious ritual and fill her belly, except for the social obligation to doll herself up to be sure that she looks professional. After all, that is what she is expected to do and she has all the same developed a mental inclination to that matter. But if it is a thing natural of her or that she has, by circumstance, taken to through experience, she is not sure about it.

Now that she has finished perking up her appearance, she takes a look at her bright strawberry lips for one last time through a scanty, circle-shaped mirror beneath the lid of her make-up box and pouts with satisfaction. Suddenly, in haste, she flicks it closed and puts it down on the old wooden trunk, leaving it there out of place. Then, her steps dart before the half-length mirror that has come attached to one side of the closet and scrutinise her torso in a black half blouse, and then she runs her eyes down to the lower part, clad in tights of the same colour. Before departure, she peers into her eyes in the mirror, a lustre of delight filling up.

On her way to the far main road through confined passes, confusing trails, and turns, she discerns watching eyes from afar, within, and then behind. At some point, a couple of women, carrying cane baskets that contain stuff from the market, are already engaged in a chat, standing close to each other. She knows them, as do they. When the eyes meet, both react to her with half-smiles that seem as if they tried and then resume their conversation. She has a disconcerting sense that they are talking negatively about her. That does not stop her feet, though. She just looks away in another direction and meets with the positive embrace of houses, buildings, pigeons sparsely perched on the telephone lines, and sun-clad green leaves withdrawn into nooks and corners. She walks on and on, and when she gets near the tea house, a camp of trishore drivers confronts her. She inevitably sees them every day on her way to work and back home. Some of them, along with other unfamiliar-faced men, are disgustingly goggling at her. She discerns that they are speaking, wearing reeking looks. This time, she comes to feel a little fear and quickens her gait. Past the tea house, she spots a young couple and their child ambling out of it. The little girl stretches her hand toward her father as if demanding that he enfold her in his arms. Acquiescently, he leaves her with a manifestation of loving care and settles her within the protective girdles of fatherly strength. The mother beside her patted her daughter’s head delicately as they shuffled over to their car, parked a little way off. Sadness comes over her eyes like turbid clouds swollen with unshed rain. She can do nothing other than envy the extent of freedom they are fortunate enough to feel.

Caught up in several preoccupations, traversing the distant territory of the past, then the present, and the hazy future, she continues to walk until she finds herself near the bus stop. She overhears a prematurely curious little girl, underage for the school year, who has taken hold of the man beside her by hand and asks him as they pass her by, “If Mama is a teacher there, what does she do?” She is startled by the question as if she is suddenly smitten by the abhorring idea that a question of that kind will, one day, confront her bluntly and grimly. Now, her girl is too young. But when will she start to ask her what she has feared to answer all along? She is not prepared to respond when her daughter demands: ‘What is it and what do you have to do, Mom?’

She releases a piece from a mass of weight underneath her chest into the air, which, upon touching the oxygen, melts into hot, heavy vapour. But the choking heaviness has by no means become light, not in the least, no matter how much she has strived to ease it with recurrent sighs. All of a sudden, a parade of pre-kahtein festival engulfed in dhamma music blaring from loudspeakers arranged on white hijacks (Of the kind common in Myanmar) comes from a distance, passing through the busy motorway parallel to the plying traffic. Seeing the massive bronze Suddenly, decorated kahtein trees laden with cash offerings flanked Gutamma. (Padaytharpin), a wave of guilt washes over her. The sight makes her too afraid to face Lord Buddha. The next time she recites the five precepts, when it comes to saying prayers, she will have to leave out the third line: so, she decides to:

Out of the murky stillness of the night springs the sound of prayers:
Panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(I observe refraining from killing any living being.)
Adinnadana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(I observe refraining from taking what is not given.)
 
And just after that, the recitation comes to an abrupt halt and takes up the following instead:
Musavada veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(I observe refraining from telling lies.)
Suramerayamajja pamadatthana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(I observe refraining from taking any intoxicant or drug that defiles the mind.)
 
Skipping this one unsaid:
Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
(I observe refraining from committing sexual misconduct.)

The young woman’s face has transfigured into a look of misery, while high above on the shrine, Lord Buddha sits calm and peaceful, flowering a smile of freedom over this realm.

Note

1. Mohinga – Popular traditional cuisine in Myanmar which is rice noodles mixed with yellow fish soup

2. Htamein – Traditional lower wear for women and girls in Myanmar

3. Kahtein – The time in the month of Tazaungmone (October) or Tazaungdine (November) when monks are offered robes and feasts are held for merit-making

Picture design by Anumita Roy